Students should have read the textbook by the first day of class.
The course outline is available here. The outline will be modified to meet the [changing] needs of students and instructor. Specific lesson outlines and additional information will be made available in an ongoing manner.
JAN 09 2003 to APR 03 2003.
Interpretive inquiry, as any other human practice cannot be learned by talking or reading about it but requires that we participate in it. Thus, even the slightest description of how to collect data or interpret data inherently underdetermines just what you have to do. It is through your own doing that you find the relevance in and of the description.
Take a cookbook recipe as an example. However explicit the recipe, you will find yourself in situations where you do not know what a particular instruction means. It is only through cooking--and sometimes through your knowledge of what the end product is supposed to look like--that you know what an instruction means.Only when you actually are able to do the real thing does the description of it really become meaningful.
So throughout this course, we engage in two types of activities, doing interpretive inquiry and talking about it. These two activities stand in a dialectical and reflexive relation that together constitute each other, that is, interpretive inquiry as an accountable (rather than tacit) research practice.
My research has shown that human knowing is constituted in participation in authentic activity and changing participation is equivalent to learning. Thus, reading and participating in discussions prepares you to read scholarly articles and participate in scholarly discussions. Doing research prepares you to do research. Listening to lectures prepares you to listen to lectures. (Nevertheless, I may, as needed, use mini-lectures to share some of my experiences in doing research.) Central to your learning will therefore be active participation, so far as to propose activities or make changes to the course as I have prepared it. It is only when your learning is truly in your hands that the course can achieve its objective, helping you learn.
In this course, we will design a study, likely something to do with water use and water conservation in Victoria. We will design interviews, practice interviews, go out do interviews, transcribe interviews, analyze interviews, and write up our work. The ultimate purpose is for students to experience the research process in all its facets write to the preparation of a manuscript. Time involved with the reviews will prevent us from seeing collectively how the paper will fare.
Each meeting, we will take some time for brief summaries/ presentations by the instructor, whole-class discussions of the readings for the day, and activities related to data analysis and development of project.
I would like to spend some time periodically, to talk about our experience in and of this course and how we can improve what is going on--if and when this is necessary.
A detailed, continuously growing outline, including support materials, readings, data, etc. is available following the link. The outline will be modified to meet the [changing] needs of students and instructor. Specific lesson outlines and additional information will be made available in an ongoing manner.
Uwe Flick , Introduction to Qualitative Research, Sage Publications Ltd. (Paperback, June, 2002)
(Students are expected to have read the textbook by the time they come to the first class.)
Readings as required by the collective research project. Students will be expected to make occasional presentations regarding the readings they have done.
In order to be able to participate in the conversations during our meetings, students (an professor) are expected to have read the selection for the day.
Major Assignment
Minor Assignments
The course grade is made up in the following way: 50% major assignment, 50% minor assignments (30%, 10%, 10%).
Appointments are made by special arrangement sufficiently in advance. You may find it more convenient to write an email, which in most cases, deals with many issues. Also email me at least a day or two advance for any special appointment. (mailto:mroth@uvic.ca)